• make reasoned judgements regarding the value of others’ work to your research;
• support your arguments with valid evidence in a logical manner;
• distinguish clearly between fact and opinion.
5. Although there is no single structure that your critical review should take, it is useful to think of the review as a
funnel in which you:
• start at a more general level before narrowing down to your specific research question(s) and objectives;
• provide
a brief overview of key ideas;
• summarize, compare and contrast the work of the key writers;
• narrow down to highlight the work most relevant to your research;
• provide a detailed account of the findings of this work;
• highlight the issues where your research will provide fresh insights;
• lead the reader into subsequent sections of your project report, which explore these issues.
Whichever way you structure your review you must demonstrate
that you have read, understood and evaluated the
items you have located. The key to writing a critical literature review is therefore to link together the different ideas you
find in the literature to form a coherent and cohesive argument, which set in context and justify your research. Obvi-
ously, it should relate to your research question and objectives. It should show a clear link from these as well as a clear
link to the empirical work that will follow.
6. The literature sources available to help you to develop a good understanding of and insight into previous re-
search can be divided into three categories: primary (published and unpublished), secondary, and tertiary. In reality
these categories often overlap: for example, primary literature sources including conference proceedings can appear in
journals, and some books contain indexes to primary and secondary literature.
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